More than five months after a technical committee set up by the Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi submitted its report to his office; it is becoming clear that the dream has been killed by lack of political will and official inconsistency.
Lead to this narrative was given in an interview by Engineer Olu Akinsoji, a renowned marine engineer and former Nigeria’s Alternate Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in an interview.
The Administrator, Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN), Oron from 1992 to 2000 and Government Inspector of Shipping from 2000 to 2001 who served as a top member of the Ministerial Committee on the Establishment of a National Carrier explained that since his committee submitted its interim report, they have not heard anything concerning the implementation from the government.
He said the committee and the minister in concurrence had agreed to begin creation of an environment for Nigeria to be able to have their own ships or even for foreign investors to come into the system and have confidence in putting money into buying ships and flying Nigerian flag.
But more than six months, we have not heard anything from the government on which direction we are to go on the matter.
He said “These are the concepts, but I have not seen that happening yet and that is because in my opinion, the environment has not been created and the environment is not yet attractive and I wish that more political seriousness is put into this to allow it to emerge because it is a fantastic initiative”.
He decried that “dragging our feet cannot gain us the pathway to achieving the objectives of that imitative”.
“It is a thing of worry. As a member of that committee; I thank the minister for giving me the opportunity to be there but I am not too happy that we cannot count on the gains of making the objective of that initiative. We spent so much time on it and I think there is not enough political will to push this thing to effectiveness,” Akinsoji lamented.
